The Big Tech Show
00:10:49 · Adrian Weckler
[00:10:49] S5: We we will go along and support even. And just in terms of whether it's popular or unpopular, what I found really interesting was a few years ago, you might remember this, Apple had... They were trying to tighten, their own systems against child abuse material. And what they did was they introduced a change which would allow the detection of a very small specific number of known illegal imagery at the point at which it was uploaded from an iPhone to iCloud. So it was a very, very narrow single point. And there was such an outcry over it from a privacy perspective that Apple had to back down. And now Apple wanted to do that, and there was a huge outcry from its own customers. And it does seem to me that every time The UK, The US, every time a state, an elected body has gone up, on this issue and tried to put forth this idea that it ends up actually being an unpopular one. I mean, there was a poll a few weeks ago. You probably saw It was, it was, put out, I think, jointly by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, but it it... And and it was done by an American civil rights association with strong views on this, so you take that into account. But it did suggest that there were... There was a majority... Strong majority in Ireland who when you put the issue to them, because this is what it boils down to, do you think it's worth it to fight very serious crime? Maybe the worst type of crime, child abuse. Do you think it's worth it to get into your WhatsApps to do that? And people say no.
00:12:33 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:12:33] S4: And two thirds of them, I think, said no Yeah. In the... In that case. But as you've correctly identified, in any survey, the question you ask, the amount in which you ask it, and the people you ask it of will dictate the actual result that you get. But even if you had a situation where two thirties... Let's say that survey is bang on the money. And and I think that the other thing in that survey is that people cited a distrust of the government and the state and future governments and and the future state in allowing them to do that. [00:13:00] S5: I mean, it's fair enough. [00:13:01] S4: I actually don't think it is. It might be in America, but it isn't here. Like, if you... I'm not saying that this is a perfect state or anything like that. But if you look at the respect that the state generally has for the constitutional requirements it has, it is defended fairly jealously by the courts. And when the government is held to account to the courts, no quarter is given in terms of whether they breach people's rights or not. They will be held to account. So people can have confidence in Cicinaire, not in individual politicians or individual ministers or even individual governments, but in the state to protect their rights because the state does that.
00:13:01 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:13:01] S4: I actually don't think it is. It might be in America, but it isn't here. Like, if you... I'm not saying that this is a perfect state or anything like that. But if you look at the respect that the state generally has for the constitutional requirements it has, it is defended fairly jealously by the courts. And when the government is held to account to the courts, no quarter is given in terms of whether they breach people's rights or not. They will be held to account. So people can have confidence in Cicinaire, not in individual politicians or individual ministers or even individual governments, but in the state to protect their rights because the state does that. [00:13:31] S5: But as this is not an example, the way I would think about this would be that it's almost a sign of a strong democracy where a right can exist such as a strong privacy, even an absolute privacy right, even when you know that it's going to be abused, and you know that some bad things or terrible things are gonna, come as a result of that, that overall, when everything is taken into consideration, you can still defend that right? [00:14:00] S4: I don't think that's the measure of the strength of a democracy. I think No. [00:14:04] S5: No. But I [00:14:04] S4: think No. But I mean, [00:14:05] S5: there's one of the measures [00:14:06] S4: of destruction. But there's no right that's absolute. You know? And this is something where, like [00:14:10] S5: Well, no. Sorry. There... I mean, there are. You've you've... Even in Ireland, you have an absolute right to life.
00:14:10 · Adrian Weckler, Barry Ward
[00:14:10] S5: Well, no. Sorry. There... I mean, there are. You've you've... Even in Ireland, you have an absolute right to life. [00:14:15] S4: You don't. Well... Well, if you and I get in a row Yeah. And you're about to kill me, and I kill you to stop you from killing me [00:14:21] S5: Yes. [00:14:21] S4: That's a lawful killing. [00:14:22] S5: Yes. It is. [00:14:23] S4: So it's not... You don't have an absolute right to your life in those circumstances. So there's no such thing as any absolute right. Every right is tempered by the rights of other people and other things. Yeah. But the So Yeah. Sorry. I know that's a philosophical argument, but you are doing the same thing. You're balancing the right to privacy of an individual against the right of society to be safe or children to be safe or whichever group [00:14:43] S5: Well, then in that case then, why don't we... And I... This is not a facetious question. Why don't we have, cameras in domestic homes? Because we know, for example, that, for example, domestic violence is a terrible crime. Murder is a terrible crime. We know that, we would be able to cut a lot of that out if we had more surveillance and more cameras. Why don't we do that if [00:15:08] S4: Well, again, it comes back to the balance. Is that a reasonable balancing of the rights of the privacy of the household to the rights of society to protect individuals from murder? And by the way, murders happen on camera all the time. It doesn't mean because you put cameras in a home that it'll stop domestic violence.
00:15:08 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:15:08] S4: Well, again, it comes back to the balance. Is that a reasonable balancing of the rights of the privacy of the household to the rights of society to protect individuals from murder? And by the way, murders happen on camera all the time. It doesn't mean because you put cameras in a home that it'll stop domestic violence. [00:15:23] S5: Protect them. I mean, I remember when we were talking when we were talking about e scooters, and it's a completely different topic, but the the example we use there was with cars. You don't ban cars even though you know... We know that this year, there will be over a hundred deaths only because of cars. We know that over a hundred people will, yeah, will lose their lives. There'll be terrible bereavements. Cars are useful. And we make the very, very, I don't know, cold, brutal, but pragmatic assessment that it's worth having cars in our society even though we know [00:16:00] S4: I think it's worth people will kill. I think it's worse than that. That's not the choice we make. We make decision not just to have cars, but to have cars that are not speed limited. We make the decision to have cars that don't have monitors on them to see what speed they're doing, where they are, all that kind of thing. So there are other decisions that were made.
00:16:00 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:16:00] S4: I think it's worth people will kill. I think it's worse than that. That's not the choice we make. We make decision not just to have cars, but to have cars that are not speed limited. We make the decision to have cars that don't have monitors on them to see what speed they're doing, where they are, all that kind of thing. So there are other decisions that were made. [00:16:16] S5: I mean, you would... You... I think you would agree in general, that is what society has settled on. Yes. That's what we want. And so if you bring it back to something like my right to message you or your right to call me, the idea that that call or that text message channel could be open to the guards or the company for various reasons, even albeit to to fight crime, society so far has settled that it's not worth it. [00:16:45] S4: Well, I don't agree that that's what we're talking about. So for example, when I talk about the the looking behind the curtain as it were, it's got to be in a really strictly controlled limited circumstance. So there would have to be a really solid basis for them to be able to intercept the messages between you and me. That can't be just like, don't like Weckler, don't like Ward, whatever it is, or I wanna see what Ward has to say about something. That's not a basis. [00:17:09] S5: Well, do have some examples of the guards, you know, abusing their own processes for their own Yeah.